Author archive: csmith

Day 110: Can I communicate too much? This will be a short post. No. …… All right, I will expound a little more. Back to great organizations have great plans. Great organizations also follow the great plans. But the best organizations tell everyone what they have done. I fall into the trap a lot that…

Day 109: How do I improve the lives of our residents? In yesterday’s post I asked if you are improving the lives of the residents. So, I would assume you would than ask how do I do that? Historically economic development has been about creating jobs. Whenever we work with clients we tell them to…

Day 108: Should you be concerned with your citizen’s wealth? Today we had a conversation with Ed Burghard, CEO of The Burghard Group, strengtheningamerica.com, Ed is the best in the country when it comes to branding. If you want to have a clearer definition of branding than visit his website. We economic developers are lucky…

Day 107: Team building: This is not a talk about sitting around the fire singing. But this is about truly working to build a team. For your organization to be successful, you need to have everyone on your team singing the same song. I am not saying you need people that are saying yes to…

Day 106: What do you do when someone lets you down? Now this may be a weird topic, but it happens to all of us. I try to not disappoint, but sometimes things are out of our control. And, always remember that if someone you work with disappointed you, it most likely was not intentional. …

Day 105: Distracted again? It is so easy to get distracted during the work day. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. So, I promise I won’t keep harping on this. It’s probably more for me than you. It’s all about a plan. If you have a great plan than you should have a hard…

Day 104: If I were to do one thing today, what would it be? Hmm. There are so many right answers. But, I am going with the philosophical answer (probably because I attended a church retreat this weekend). During this retreat, I had some time to think about my priorities. For me they are God,…

Day 103: Have you asked someone how you are doing? Very few economic development organizations and some chamber of commerce review the staff every year. Most people are uncomfortable doing reviews and being reviewed. Even when we are doing an awesome job, it’s not something we seek out. We recommend to our clients that they…

Day 102: Do I get distracted? This might seem to be a strange post. The purpose of my posts are to help you with your day to day activities. I find myself distracted today, so I thought I should get busy and write to get me back on track. With the advent of the internet…

Day 101: Rankings: One of the sessions at IEDC was about rankings. At one point one of the speakers discussed that he had gone back and looked at the rankings over several years. He was surprised that Provo, UT, Des Moines, IA and Tulsa, OK has continuously come in at the top for several years. …

The business of economic development encompasses a broad range of strategies including business retention and attraction, entrepreneurship, workforce development and the attraction of talent, tourism, place branding and marketing, product development, and community planning to enhance the quality of place. The bottom line - to generate new wealth and growth.